Recent advances in various technologies have allowed devices, such as cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and telematics devices in automobiles, to determine their location. After a given one of these devices determines its location, the given device may process data that indicates the location of the device and thereafter notify a user (e.g., visually and/or audibly) as to the location of the device. In this way, when the user is in the same location as the device, the user is notified of his or her location as well.
Each of the foregoing devices may be operable to communicate with a system that provides one or more services to the device. The one or more services may include a service that assists the device in determining its location. The foregoing system may be maintained and/or operated by a service provider that tracks, individually and/or collectively, the amount of service provided to each of the devices. Such tracking may allow the service provider to charge the user of each device an appropriate fee for using the system, and/or to estimate capacity requirements of the system. As the amount of service provided by the system increases, an estimate of capacity requirements may be used by the service provider to plan for expansion of the system.
In addition to challenges that are associated with expanding the system, a service provider may be challenged to provide a desired quality-of-service to the devices using the system. One way to assist the service provider in providing the desired quality-of-service may include preventing a device from requesting service from (i) an element of the system that is not operable to perform the requested service, or (ii) an element of the system that is not the optimum element for performing the requested service. Such prevention may greatly improve the quality of service provided by the system.